1. The ‘Two Worlds Theory’ in the Philebus

   Gail Fine
   In this paper, I ask whether Plato endorses the ‘Two Worlds Theory’ in the Philebus. The issue is complicated in part because that theory has been formulated in different, not obviously equivalent, ways. Accordingly, I begin by distinguishing different versions of the view. I then explore the central passages in the Philebus, asking whether they endorse one or another version of the view.
2. Fatalism and False Futures

   Jason Carter
   In De Interpretatione 9, Aristotle argues against the fatalist view that, if statements about future contingent singular events (e.g. ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow’, ‘There will not be a sea battle tomorrow’) are already true or false, then the events to which those statements refer will necessarily occur or necessarily not occur. Scholars have generally held that, to refute this argument, Aristotle allows that future contingent statements are exempt from either the principle of bivalence, or the law of excluded middle. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Aristotle’s refutation of fatalism. According to this interpretation, each member of a pair of contradictory future contingent statements, in virtue of expressing modal necessity, is simply false.
3. Can You Deny the PNC? (Metaphysics Γ.3, 1005b11–34)

   Ian Campbell and Gabriel Shapiro
   In Metaphysics Γ.3, Aristotle argues that it is impossible to deny the PNC. However, as several commentators—including Code, Barnes, Priest, Kirwan, and Dancy—have objected, Aristotle’s argument appears to rely on the invalid inference from 1 to 2 as follows:
   1. For all p, it is impossible to believe that p and not-p.
   2. Therefore, it is impossible to believe that it is possible that there is a p such that p and not-p.
   We argue that this objection turns on a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s text, and that Aristotle’s argument is valid and quite strong.
4. Aristotle on Knowledge and the Knowable

   Jessica Moss
   Aristotle has a general concept of knowledge, which he labels gnôsis (in addition to his better-recognized various concepts of specialized kinds of knowledge, like epistêmê). I show that we can learn a good deal about how he conceives gnôsis by looking at his treatment of the gnôrimon, knowable. There are two apparent obstacles to a unified account of the gnôrimon: first, Aristotle’s distinction between what is knowable by nature and knowable to us, and second his application of ‘gnôrimon’ both to propositions and to objects. I argue that these obstacles are merely apparent. Aristotle has a unified notion of the gnôrimon, namely as that with which we can be well-acquainted—either through familiarity or through insight and understanding. This strongly suggests that gnôsis is knowledge in the sense of good-acquaintance (roughly, connaissance). Moreover, Aristotle does not have a separate notion of propositional or factual knowledge: all knowledge, propositional or not, is a matter of being well-acquainted with reality. On Aristotle’s view, all humans by nature desire to know not primarily because we want our beliefs to be certain or justified or reliably produced or the like, but because we want reality to be well-known to us, like a well-known person.
5. Nicomachean Revision in the ‘Common Books’: the Case of NE VI. (≈EE V.) 2

   Samuel Baker
   We have good reason to believe that Nicomachean Ethics VI. 2 is a Nicomachean revision of an originally Eudemian text. Aristotle seems to have inserted lines 1139a31–b11 by means of a marginal note, which the first editor then mistakenly added in the wrong place, and I propose that we move these lines so that they follow the word κοινωνεῖν at 1139a20. The suggested note appears to be Nicomachean for several reasons but most importantly because it contains a desire-based account of the practical intellect as teleologically oriented to action. The NE articulates consequences of this account regarding practical philosophy’s methodology and teleological orientation to action. The EE does not articulate such consequences, and instead seems to assume an object-based account of the practical intellect. Consequently, it would seem that, between the EE and the NE, Aristotle revised his conception of the practical intellect and consequently his conception of practical philosophy.
6. Something Stoic in Plato’s Sophist

   Vanessa de Harven
   The Stoics have often been compared to the earthborn Giants in the Battle of Gods and Giants in Plato’s Sophist, but with diverging opinions about the lessons they drew in reaction to Plato. At issue are questions about what in the Sophist the Stoics were reacting to, how the Stoics are like and unlike the Giants, the status of being for the Stoics, and the extent to which they were Platonizing with their incorporeals. With these open questions in mind, I reexamine the Sophist from the Stoic perspective, finding eight distinct challenges that are likely to have been salient to the Stoics, and offer a new account of the Stoics as responding to these challenges with an innovative ontology that prises apart something from being to make room for what is not, and a sophisticated one-world metaphysics that grounds everything there is in two fundamental bodies.

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